Louise Gluck: on the myths of originality versus, that ‘lesser thing’, uniqueness....
Earthworm — Louise Gluck
One of the less noticed but admirable things abt Louise Gluck is the number of younger writers/poets for whom she has written forewords, lent her voice of support by writing lengthy notes on their work: Dana Levin, Richard Siken, Spencer Reese, Jay Hopler, Peter Streckfus et al
Memoir — Louise Gluck
‘And if when I wrote I used only a few words
it was because time always seemed to me short...’
‘I Was Unprepared. It seemed to be extremely unlikely that I would ever have this particular event to deal with in my life.” nytimes.com/2020/10/08/boo…
In a different valence, another kind of Brindabani Sarang by Aarti Anklikar | द२स् बिना... vimeo.com/m/26470626
another version of Brindavana Saranga
excerpts from a verse composed during the Sangam era, 100 CE to 300CE, reimagined by the genius of Anil Srinivasan (piano) and Sikkil Gurucharan (vocals)
I was thinking about this play yesterday, and thought I'll make small thread for those interested.
1. This play ('Urubhangam', 'The Shattered Thighs') -- for which I've made a cover -- is a one-act [vyayoga] play by Bhasa, inspired from the Mahabharata, that ocean-sized epic.
3a. Set on the18th day of the Kurukshetra war, the Kaurava warlord Duryodhana who hides in a lake, wounded, then dies at the hands of Bhima thanks to Krishna's cunning, the blind king Dhritharashtra heads into the forest, & Ashwathamma sets out for the night-massacre of Pandavas.
over the past few days I have been reading the great Colin Thubron's travels in China of 1985-86, just as it was opening up. It is a largely forgotten book about a lost in-between time -- a melancholic period after Mao's insanities but before McDonalds arrived.
over the last few days, I’ve been thinking about covers of books that i have enjoyed/admire/learnt from. and so i asked, what do i take from the text, how did it make me see the world, and how can it be represented? so, i did some experiments.
a running thread. hopefully fun.
1. English, August by Upamanyu Chatterjee
the sly ennui that Agastya Sen experiences is overwhelming, but it slowly it seemed tome that beneath all that urban Indian cynicism is a slow recognition that India is a strange, strange place.
[photo from a Satyajit Ray film]
2. The Legends of Khasak | O. V. Vijayan
The master wrote a fable abt the borderlands of Kerala-TN; but inside it are tightly wound historic, erotic, & folk anxieties, coiled up as legends, that somehow stay in place, till one day they stop playing ball w/ history.